


Near Miss

by talefeathers



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Blood, Foreshadowing, Gen, Gun Violence, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: When Cuthbert gets good and shot, Roland considers for the first time what it will mean to live without him.





	Near Miss

They were 15 years old the first time one of them got good and shot, and of course it was fucking Cuthbert.

It’s been untold years (perhaps even centuries) and still Roland remembers it as if he is there. He remembers the dust that hung in the air in a way that seemed tense, in a way that seemed to ask “Was that it? Is it over?” He remembers the glance he passed from one to the next of his ka-tet, a glance he would regret in seconds because he should have saved it for the bodies on the ground. He remembers a deafening report, somehow so much louder than the cacophony of moments past.

And he remembers a brilliant spray of red.

“Fuck!” Cuthbert spat as he lurched to his knees, clutching a bloody hole in his gut.

The other two drew, but Roland was, as always, the first, and it was his gun that felled the surviving insurgent. Then he was at Cuthbert’s side, catching him before he could pitch forward.

“No fucking – manners.” Cuthbert tried to sound airy through gritted teeth. “Not so much as a ‘pardon me’ before blowing me to hell. Honestly, society has really gone… it’s gone…”

“Shut up,” Roland said, a touch more harshly than he’d meant to.

Cuthbert’s lips twitched into a weak grin. The color had drained from his face, and his eyes had a dazed, unfocused look about them.

Roland realized, suddenly and violently, that he could be dying.

He looked up to tell Alain to fetch a surgeon and was gratified to see that he was already gone.

“Alright,” Roland murmured. “Alright.”

He tore a bit of cloth from the bottom of his shirt and gently pried Cuthbert’s hands away from the wound so he could stem the bleeding with it.

“You should lie down,” he said.

Cuthbert didn’t seem to have heard him. His head had drooped down onto Roland’s shoulder.

“Here, hold that,” Roland said, pulling Bert’s hands to the bloody, balled-up cloth and pressing them there. He looped his arms around his friend and gently lowered him onto his back.

“You’re fine,” Roland said. Insisted. “It’s only the pain, it’s not. You’re fine.”

Cuthbert, renowned for his ever-wagging tongue, only blinked blearily in response. Roland swallowed past a painful tightness in his throat. After a moment’s hesitation, he pushed a hand into Cuthbert’s hair.

Cuthbert’s eyes slipped shut.

“No,” Roland whimpered, though he knew even before he checked his pulse that Cuthbert had not died. It was just that now, with Cuthbert limp and bleeding beside him, it was all too easy to imagine that he had. 

Roland had known for years, of course, that this was inevitable. He even knew that he was likely to outlive all or most of his friends. But knowing was a far cry from seeing, from feeling, and Roland’s stunted sense of speculation had never allowed him either before. He had never imagined Cuthbert cold, and still, and quiet. He had known that he would lose him, yes, but he had never considered life without him.

He took a shallow breath, and then another, and then, quietly, Roland began to cry.

\---

He had composed himself again by the time Alain returned with the surgeon a few minutes later. The bullet was removed with no fuss. Cuthbert recovered quickly, and lived for another nine years before Jericho Hill.

Still, Roland never forgot this first time, this glance at what was to come. He never forgot the dread he felt, the horrible, lung-crushing fear. And until the bitter end, he never let anyone get the drop on Cuthbert Allgood again.


End file.
